284 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
popular writers have every confidence in the existence of (a) an 
“Old English Starling,” and (b) a “‘ Siberian Starling” that is 
rapidly ousting the native race. I will deal with this question 
of subspecies shortly, but would first like to draw attention to 
the roosting habits. To-day, in England, the bird is best 
known as passing the night in trees, bushes, or reed-beds; 
occasionally I have seen them congregating in ivy-covered cliffs, 
but never in buildings until the present spring, when I dis- 
covered that large numbers spent the night in the stonework at 
the summit of the Nelson Monument in London—a strange 
sight and an unusual chorus for Trafalgar Square. Macgillivray 
describes Starlings roosting in winter in caverns in the Hebrides, 
and Montagu and other old authors speak of them congregating 
in winter in dovecots for the sake of the warmth. 
In returning to the question of the races of the Starling, I 
cannot do better than quote the words of Dr. R. B. Sharpe 
(Cat. Birds B. M., vol. xiii. p. 29) :—‘‘ The Common Starling of 
Europe is easily distinguished by its colours—green head, green 
ear-coverts, green throat, green scapulars and wing-coverts, and 
steel-blue or greenish flanks. The Siberian Starling (S. menz- 
biert), which visits India in winter, and which has always been 
called S. vulgaris, differs from the English bird in haying a 
reddish-purple head, ear-coverts, and throat, and also in its 
violet-purple flanks. In the British Islands, and doubtless in 
other parts of Europe, intermediate examples occur, more 
frequently in winter, when a large immigration of foreign 
Starlings into England takes place. These intermediate speci- 
mens vary to any extent as regards the amount of purple on the 
head and throat, but they are never, so far as my experience 
goes, true S. menzbiert, as they have always green ear-coverts. 
It may well be that a species exists in Hastern Europe which 
has a purple head and throat and green ear-coverts, and that 
this bird migrates southwards and westwards in winter, and 
that numbers of them stop in England and mate with our 
indigenous birds, which have in consequence been made to vary 
more or less in the direction of a purple head and throat.”’ 
Writing sixteen years later (Hist. Coll. Brit. Mus. (N. H.), 
vol. il. p. 480), Dr. Sharpe refers again to the subject, and 
speaks of the course and extent of his observations. He writes: 
